Rònké Òké

Dr. Rònké A. Òké is the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) and Deputy Title IX Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where she operationalizes the tools of her academic training to drive the strategic implementation of PAFA’s diversity change agenda. Dr. Òké also has a faculty appointment in PAFA’s Liberal Arts Department. Dr. Òké received her BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Spelman College, MA in Philosophy from the University of Memphis, and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Penn State University. Dr. Òké specializes in race and identity formation with a particular emphasis on transnational conceptions of Blackness, decolonial feminist politics (Afro-feminism), and anti-racist, trans-structuralist social justice. Dr. Òké has taught at both private and public institutions and students from middle school to continuing education adults. Dr. Òké's work as an educator goes beyond the limits of teaching and is strongly influenced by her commitment to public philosophy and a continual striving to provide educational access for all. In the past, her projects sought to reconstruct a philosophical account of lived experience that does justice to the experience of race. Dr. Òké has since departed from a specific focus on how race works in the US to consider how the racial imaginary operates on the African Continent and in African Diasporic communities. Currently Dr. Òké's projects merge her interest in questions of race, citizenship, and identity with her love of African literature. In addition to a strong research profile, Dr. Òké has extensive experience creating public programs, events, conferences and literary products. In 2016, she founded The African Literati, a public programming company that provides curated events for companies, community organizations and co-working spaces. Dr. Òké is a 2019 Leeway Foundation Art & Change grantee. In 2020, Dr. Òké led a weekly IG Live series -- #WritersBlockWednesday -- where she interviewed new Black writers about their writing process and discussed how they overcome writer’s block. Dr. Òké has a long history of moving throughout the non-profit, academic and community-organizing worlds and has a deep commitment to DEIB.  She is co-founding The National Consortium of Diversity Practitioners, a resource network for Black professionals in the DEIB space.